'The Crawl Babies were for fun, music should be fun...'

'They say you know nothing at eighteen. But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again. ' Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies.

It is a Sunday morning when I learn the news.

Scrolling through Facebook, it is an image of a cassette inlay cover that catches my eye:

It was posted by Colin; starkly captioned ‘RIP’.

I check the date - my heart sinks. Posted the night before.

I read through the replies; it’s Kevin.

The next few days, I move through my daily routine, troubled, in a sort of daze. I am struggling to get my head around the shock of this news. Willie passed away in 2017, he was just 48 years old. Kevin couldn’t have been much older. There’s a shared history, a bond with both, that goes back many years.

And it feels like something more than the passing of an old friend.

Rewind to circa 1990. Whipping Boy, still finding our feet, are playing to a half empty Underground bar in Dublin. After the show, four young men approach us. They look more like a band then we do – the leather jackets, the Chelsea boots, the haircuts. Their passion, their enthusiasm for the music burns.

They are a band called the Crawl Babies, and have travelled up from Kilkenny just to see the gig - this, in itself, blows us away. We talk for a while, exchange phone numbers. Willie promises he will promote a show in Kilkenny with us headlining, and the Crawl Babies supporting.

We think nothing more of it. As good as his word, Willie contacts us a few weeks later.

It is all set.  A venue has been lined up. He is expecting at least 400 at the show. In fact, he is bullish - he guarantees it. For a band struggling to entice a hundred souls along to gigs in our hometown, this seems…ambitious.

That first gig in Kilkenny is nothing short of spectacular.  The Crawl Babies open; Kevin is the singer, a snarling, magnetic stage presence. Willie plays a three-string bass guitar which impresses us no end. Apparently, three strings is all he needs. The band make a fierce noise, a ferocious racket.

By the time we take to the stage, the place is heaving. It is absolute carnage, and for the first time, we get a glimpse of what it feels like to be a real band. There’s a connection with an audience that we hadn’t really experienced before. A wild abandon, that is both beautiful and a little shocking.

There are more trips to Kilkenny. More wild nights.

 Friendships are cemented.

Willie is always a warm and generous host.

And then, as so often happens, life moves on, and we all go our separate ways. I stay in contact with Willie through social media. The occasional text, just to catch up on how things are going.

Willie’s death in 2017 is a shuddering, numbing shock. We knew he had been unwell, but the last contact I had with him seemed to suggest a positive outlook.

Myles and I travel down to Kilkenny for the funeral on a bitterly cold November morning.

St Mary’s Cathedral is thronged. The impact Willie had on his community, the people he loved and lived with. It was obvious how many lives he had touched. And music was always the common language, his passion, the source of so much joy in his life.

We see some familiar faces, older now, like us all.

We meet Kevin for the first time in many years – he seems a little broken, but then, why wouldn’t he be? Willie had been a massive part of his life. We reminisce about those wonderful nights in Kilkenny, about Willie’s impact on the local music scene, the record shop he set up in the town.

We leave that day with the vague promise to try to meet up again in less sad circumstances.

It will be the last time we see Kevin.

I have been trying to figure out why the news of Kevin’s untimely passing has affected me so much. And I think it is this: Willie, Kevin, the Crawl Babies, Kilkenny are all woven into the tapestry of my own life in a unique way.

They were a big part of the story of Whipping Boy, probably a bigger part than they even realised. 

But its more than that.

They were good people, they opened their hearts to us and made us feel like anything was possible. They believed in us, encouraged us, when we needed it most. Music brought us together, but it is that bond of friendship that remained, when the music died away. That is what is most important.

I have two memories of Kevin and Willie that endure. The first is that chance encounter at the top of the staircase at the Underground bar when we first met.

The second memory is more elusive. Dreamlike, even. So much so, I am not even sure if it happened.

We are walking through a field in Kilkenny. Bright early evening sunlight. We are sharing cans of beer, laughing and joking, music is everything.

 Kevin is there, Willie is there.

We are young, everything is ahead of us. The future is a brightly lit, all hopes and dreams still intact. The world is out there, ready to be conquered.

And right now, that memory feels both warm and comforting, but also quietly & utterly devastating.

(Photos courtesy of Colin Ryan)